• Daniel Ciampi de Andrade, Karine A S L Ferreira, Carine M Nishimura, Lyn T Yeng, Abrahão F Batista, Katia de Sá, Joaci Araujo, Patrick R N A G Stump, Helena H Kaziyama, Ricardo Galhardoni, Erich T Fonoff, Gerson Ballester, Telma Zakka, Didier Bouhassira, and Manoel J Teixeira.
• Pain Center, Hospital das Clínicas, Department of Neurology of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. ciampi@usp.br
• Health Qual Life Out. 2011 Jan 1;9:107.

BackgroundIt has been shown that different symptoms or symptom combinations of neuropathic pain (NeP) may correspond to different mechanistic backgrounds and respond differently to treatment. The Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory (NPSI) is able to detect distinct clusters of symptoms (i.e. dimensions) with a putative common mechanistic background. The present study described the psychometric validation of the Portuguese version (PV) of the NPSI.MethodsPatients were seen in two consecutive visits, three to four weeks apart. They were asked to: (i) rate their mean pain intensity in the last 24 hours on an 11-point (0-10) numerical scale; (ii) complete the PV-NPSI; (iii) provide the list of pain medications and doses currently in use. VAS and Global Impression of Change (GIC) were filled out in the second visit.ResultsPV-NPSI underwent test-retest reliability, factor analysis, analysis of sensitivity to changes between both visits. The PV-NPSI was reliable in this setting, with a good intra-class correlation for all items. The factorial analysis showed that the PV-NPSI inventory assessed different components of neuropathic pain. Five different factors were found. The PV-NPSI was adequate to evaluate patients with neuropathic pain and to detect clusters of NeP symptoms.ConclusionsThe psychometric properties of the PV-NPSI rendered it adequate to evaluate patients with both central and peripheral neuropathic pain syndromes and to detect clusters of NeP symptoms.© 2011 de Andrade et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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